Computer/Internet - latest

Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it. When I first started out in the real world in the mid-nineties voicemail was an important productivity tool.

But now an increasing number of people are just plain avoiding voicemail. It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it.

Cyber Cynic: "If you're a Mac or Windows user you've got several excellent top-of-the-line ultra-thin laptop choices.

If you're a desktop Linux user, your choices aren't that great. So far..."

SUSE Linux Enterprise in the Americas: "Ok, so you know that currently SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 defaults to GNOME as the desktop, a move that garnered comments from a few cranky folks in the KDE [KC]amp..."

Remember television? For most of its history, TV wasn't cable, satellite or YouTube. It was radio with low-res moving pictures.

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If you stick two bricks together, they still won't float. With that in mind, it is probably a good thing that Blockbuster pulled out of its $1.3bn deal to buy American electronics retailer Circuit City last week.

Now the company that once led the world in video and DVD rentals must contend with the realisation that it has become, in business terms, a brick, with all the associated buoyancy problems.

A French court last week ordered eBay to pay €38.8m (£30.6m) in damages to the luxury products group LVMH for letting fake versions of its designer bags be sold on the online auction site.

Chris Dobson, a senior executive at Microsoft's online business, commutes to his London office from Hertfordshire, where his local paper, the Welwyn & Hatfield Times, has been noticeably thinner of late.

'The property section used to be page after page. Now it's four sides. As a consumer, it really struck me.'

Like other titles, the paper has been deprived of valuable advertising as the downturn in the property market means fewer homes are being sold.

Income generated from other ads, including jobs and cars, is falling too.

An NHS whistleblower, who revealed that nurses caught viewing child porn had been allowed to continue treating patients, claims ministers disregarded her warnings that the disciplinary panel charged with rooting out rogue staff was failing.

Moi Ali, who was on the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), which deals with complaints against nurses and midwives, said she had tried for four years to pursue concerns about child protection.

She resigned from her post as vice-president of the council last week.

A blogger who faced charges of intimidation in cyberspace has won a landmark judgment that anti-censorship campaigners say will protect freedom of expression across the web.

Alan Murray's blog highlighting violence, vandalism and creeping sectarian division in a part of Belfast's university district landed him in the city's magistrates court on Friday.

The 40-year-old was charged with three counts of intimidating a member of a local residents' committee, including intimidation on the internet.

However, the judge found Murray not guilty on all counts.

What's up with the black dot that shows up on the top-left corner of GMail, do you know anything about it?